


Overflow

by c3mf



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c3mf/pseuds/c3mf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Douglas learnt a long time ago just how important listening can be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overflow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cabin Pressure fic meme [here](http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/4207.html?thread=5305711#cmt5305711).

Douglas had learnt a long time ago that sometimes the things he heard weren’t always there. Or rather, they _were_ , but he was the only one who could hear them.

It wasn’t that the sounds were particularly intrusive or in any way debilitating—he could function with hearing them just fine. He didn’t get distracted (mostly) or lose bits of conversation to them. The sounds superimposed themselves over people’s words, blended together until the noises were simply a revealing part of the speaker’s voice.

It was there in the gravelly grind lurking in his father’s words, even as he smiled at Douglas and his brother over Sunday breakfast. Or the quiet fragility of his mother’s laugh, even as it splintered and shattered into rain like glass.

It was there in the hard, tethered snap of leather that meant a beating long before his father ever reached for his belt.

Sometimes, Douglas caught whispers of words, faint and echoing, or caught glimpses of things he knew he had never seen himself. Those only happened rarely and never for more than an instant, poignant and fleeting like quicksilver. When the voices and the images came, the noises hit a deafening crescendo. He learnt not long after that their strange cacophonous union was a warning, an omen heralding some inevitable catastrophe.

So Douglas listened to the noises, learnt to trust and heed them, because listening—more often than not—was what kept him alive.

~*~

Once Douglas became attuned to someone’s individual acoustics, he relegated them to the background, a soft thread of white noise nestled in the back of his thoughts. If he concentrated closely enough the sounds would spike—like dialing up the volume on the radio—but once he recognized the sounds for what they were, there was no need to be hyperaware and vigilant. That would only serve to keep him on edge and eventually he would lose himself to it, to the seductively discordant harmonies…

Two marriages had collapsed under that edge, under the dissonance and the lullaby promises found in the hush at the bottom of a bottle. Douglas wasn’t at all keen to see what else temptation could wrench away.

So as it was in all things, moderation was key.

Douglas listened, (noting the important things like arrangement and intensity, all the subtle details that made up a person’s melody) and allowed himself a moment to be swept up by it… Then he let it fade to echoes—dulled by familiarity and routine—and carried on as if the world were silent.

Denial came easier than temperance.

~*~

The whir of engines followed Douglas all the way to the latest rubbish heap Carolyn had booked for them, the sound rolling off of Martin in anxiously cresting waves.

Douglas let himself listen, his gaze sliding into the unfocused middle space, as he stared ostensibly out the cab window. The familiar aircraft hum blended with the erratic xylophonic notes trickling in from Arthur, the quietness of a lullaby interspersed every so often with bouncing staccato beats.

Douglas closed his eyes and let the music reign.

~*~

Douglas smothered the sounds with thick, purposeful silence as soon as the taxi rolled to a stop, and whatever strains accidently slipped through, he disregarded. He only let the music beat its way to the forefront in small, concentrated doses, most often when the task at hand involved little thought at all—like a cab ride to the hotel. The quietness wasn’t instantaneous and complete—wrestling it back in place took some effort, consciously shifting his focus back and narrowing the world to white noise again.

The only problem with keeping out the old, familiar sounds was that sometimes he didn’t recognize when he heard something _new_.

He followed Arthur and Martin through the hotel lobby and ignored the quiet, steady trickle of water over rocks.

~*~

The intervening hours passed with uneventful predictability, but still the sounds nagged insistently at him. An annoyance, surely, but it wasn’t the first time—perhaps he was coming down with something? The sounds were loudest when he was feeling under the weather. He petulantly blotted them out with static and smiled at the quiet that followed.

The hush continued just as it should, well into the rest of the night, even as Douglas readied himself for bed. It was ridiculous to feel smug over stifling the noises in his own head, he knew, but it meant his control wasn’t the least bit unbalanced.

He stood at the bathroom sink, humming to himself, just to prove he was the loudest thing in the room, and turned the tap on…

_The rush of water is deafening._

_He rocks precariously on a ledge—no, not a ledge, the side of a bridge, on the wrong side of the barricade so the thick twists of cable ghost along his palms. The wind kisses his skin, curls around him enticingly, pulls and entreats, and God, he wants to… It would be so easy to let go._

_The rush of water is welcoming, soothing._

_The pain wouldn’t last long—or even if it did, he just wouldn’t fight it, that’s all. He would sink to the bottom of the river, settle himself in the cold and the darkness, and let the water steal the breath from his lungs._

_Falling would be just like flying, heady and liberating. It would be his last flight and it would be marvelous._

_The rush of water is full of promise._

_Letting go isn’t giving in. It’s acceptance, pure and all-encompassing, and he doesn’t fight anymore._

Douglas gasped and rocked on the all-too-sudden steadiness of the tiled floor. The real world snapped back into focus, sharp and bright, and left him blinking over-sensitized eyes. He hadn’t been overwhelmed like that in _years…_

“Douglas?”

He glanced up and caught a glimpse of Martin in the mirror, standing uncertainly in the open door, brows knitted in concern.

“Are you all right?” Martin hedged.

Douglas straightened and smoothed a hand over his face, as if that could wipe the lingering remains of the vision from his mind. “Never better,” he lied. “Ran the water too cold, is all.”

For a long moment, Martin stared, unflinchingly meeting Douglas's gaze in the mirror, as though he could measure the truth in Douglas’s words by mere observance.

Douglas smiled back at him and desperately tried the shake off the clinging fingers of weightlessness and the feeling of wind caressing his skin.

Eventually, Martin relented with a tired sigh. “If you say so,” he said and retreated.

The rush of water followed in his wake.

~*~

Douglas laid awake in the dark, dread coiling in the pit of his stomach and unfurling in thready tendrils out into his limbs until it pressed uncomfortably full against his skin. The moment he closed his eyes, he was back on the bridge, swaying and yearning…

The sound of river rapids was too loud, conspiring to submerge him, the crescendo of water threatening to pull him under him… and languishing in the undercurrent was Martin’s voice, whisper-soft and brimming with distressing liquid grace.

No, he wouldn’t sleep tonight.

Diligence and discretion was what was needed now. Douglas had learnt a long time ago how to heed a warning, had learnt how to steel himself for the inevitable fallout and settle in for the long wait.

So Douglas listened to the white-water rush of the river, trusted the sound and heeded it, because listening was all he could do to make certain Martin didn’t drown.


End file.
